'What do you mean?' asked Miss Haldin. 'What is it that you knew always?'
He raised his face, pale, full of unexpressed suffering. But that look in his eyes of dull, absent obstinacy, which struck and surprised everybody he was talking to, began to pass way. It was as though he were coming to himself in the awakened consciousness of that marvellous harmony of feature, of lines, of glances, of voice, which made of the girl before him a being so rare, outside, and, as it were, above the common notion of beauty. He looked at her so long that she coloured slightly.
'What is it that you knew?' she repeated vaguely.
That time he managed to smile.
'Indeed, if it had not been for a word of greeting or two, I would doubt whether your mother was aware at all of my existence. You understand?'
Natalia Haldin nodded; her hands moved slightly by her side.
'Yes. Is it not heart-breaking? She has not shed a tear yet—not a single tear.'
'Not a tear! And you, Natalia Victorovna? You have been able to cry?'
'I have. And then I am young enough, Kirylo Sidorovitch, to believe in the future. But when I see my mother so terribly distracted, I almost forget everything. I ask myself whether one should feel proud—or only resigned. We had such a lot of people coming to see us. There were utter strangers who wrote asking for permission to call to present their respects. It was impossible to keep our door shut for ever. You know that Peter Ivanovitch himself.... Oh yes, there was much sympathy, but there were persons who exulted openly at that death. Then, when I was left alone with poor mother, all this seemed so wrong in spirit, something not worth the price she is paying for it. But directly I heard you were here in Geneva, Kirylo Sidorovitch, I felt that you were the only person who could assist me....'
'In comforting a bereaved mother? Yes!' he broke in in a manner which made her open her clear unsuspecting eyes. 'But there is a question of fitness. Has this occurred to you?'
There was a breathlessness in his utterance which contrasted with the monstrous hint of mockery in his intention.
'Why!' whispered Natalia Haldin with feeling. 'Who more fit than you?'
He had a convulsive movement of exasperation, but controlled himself.
'Indeed! Directly you heard that I was in Geneva, before even seeing me? It is another proof of that confidence which....'
All at once his tone changed, became more incisive and more detached.
'Men are poor creatures, Natalia Victorovna. They have no intuition of sentiment. In order to speak fittingly to a mother of her lost son one must have had some experience of the filial relation. It is not the case with me—if you must know the whole truth. Your hopes have to deal here with 'a breast unwarmed by any affection,' as the poet says.... That does not mean it is insensible,' he added in a lower tone.
'I am certain your heart is not unfeeling,' said Miss Haldin softly.
'No. It is not as hard as a stone,' he went on in the same introspective voice, and looking as if his heart were lying as heavy as a stone in that unwarmed breast of which he spoke. 'No, not so hard. But how to prove what you give me credit for—ah! that's another question. No one has ever expected such a thing from me before. No one whom my tenderness would have been of any use to. And now you come. You! Now! No, Natalia Victorovna. It's too late. You come too late. You must expect nothing from me.'
She recoiled from him a little, though he had made no movement, as if she had seen some change in his face, charging his words with the significance of some hidden sentiment they shared together. To me, the silent spectator, they looked like two people becoming conscious of a spell which had been lying on them ever since they first set eyes on each other. Had either of them cast a glance then in my direction, I would have opened the door quietly and gone out. But neither did; and I remained, every fear of indiscretion lost in the sense of my enormous remoteness from their captivity within the sombre horizon of Russian problems, the boundary of their eyes, of their feelings—the prison of their souls.
Frank, courageous, Miss Haldin controlled her voice in the midst of her trouble.
'What can this mean?' she asked, as if speaking to herself.
'It may mean that you have given yourself up to vain imaginings while I have managed to remain amongst the truth of things and the realities of life—our Russian life—such as they are.'
'They are cruel,' she murmured.
'And ugly. Don't forget that—and ugly. Look where you like. Look near you, here abroad where you are, and then look back at home, whence you came.'
'One must look beyond the present.' Her tone had an ardent conviction.
'The blind can do that best. I have had the misfortune to be born clear-eyed. And if you only knew what strange things I have seen! What amazing and unexpected apparitions!... But why talk of all this?'
'On the contrary, I want to talk of all this with you,' she protested with earnest serenity. The sombre humours of her brother's friend left her unaffected, as though that bitterness, that suppressed anger, were the signs of an indignant rectitude. She saw that he was not an ordinary person, and perhaps she did not want him to be other than he appeared to her trustful eyes. 'Yes, with you especially,' she insisted. 'With you of all the Russian people in the world....' A faint smile dwelt for a moment on her lips. 'I am like poor mother in a way. I too seem unable to give up our beloved dead, who, don't forget, was all in all to us. I don't want to abuse your sympathy, but you must understand that it is in you that we can find all that is left of his generous soul.'
I was looking at him; not a muscle of his face moved in the least. And yet, even at the time, I did not suspect him of insensibility. It was a sort of rapt thoughtfulness. Then he stirred slightly.
'You are going, Kirylo Sidorovitch?' she asked.
'I! Going? Where? Oh yes, but I must tell you first....' His voice was muffled and he forced himself to produce it with visible repugnance, as if speech were something disgusting or deadly. 'That story, you know—the story I heard this afternoon....'
